Robot Trouble (9 page)

It wasn't until Rachel was actually standing at the door of the warehouse that she began to wonder if this expedition was such a good idea after all. Lifting her hand to her face, she found that she was trembling. She was glad that the luck of the draw had teamed her up with Hap. She found his quiet competence deeply reassuring.

“Come on,” he whispered now. “Let's get into position.”

They had left their shoes in the dune buggy. Sliding over the warehouse floor on stockinged feet, they moved in near perfect silence.

“There,” whispered Hap. “That's our spot.”

They took their positions. After a moment Rachel stole a glance at the husky blond crouching beside her. The fact that she liked Hap so much was beginning to bother her. She had more important things to spend her time on than thinking about boys! Yet she found Hap crossing her mind more times a day than she wanted to admit.

All right, Phillips,
she told herself sternly.
Get your mind on target. If that robot comes rolling into view while you're mooning around over Golden Boy here, you may be one sorry cookie. Pay attention!

She wondered how Roger was making out. He and Trip were hidden in the shadows directly across from them, waiting for Ray to make his move.

Shoeless like the others, the Gamma Ray slid into the open space between his friends. So far they had managed to move silently enough not to attract any of the robots.

Now that they were all in place, the plan was for that to change.

Why me?
thought Ray, looking around nervously.

Straining his eyes, he spotted Roger in the shadows.

The red-haired twin flashed him a thumbs-up sign.

Ray sighed. No sense in putting it off any longer. Slamming his basketball against the floor, he began dribbling for all he was worth.

It wouldn't take long, he was sure, before Deathmonger heard him.

 

Robo-Dieaster

All right
, thought Ray, peering about.
Where's the stupid robot?

He stopped dribbling and turned in a slow circle.

No sign of the thing.

He threw the ball against the floor again.

The loud
bounce!
echoed through the empty warehouse.

Still no sign of the robot.

Ray shrugged and began a high-speed dribble, making tight circles in the center of the warehouse. If he had to attract the robot's attention, he might as well get a little practice in while he was at it. He launched himself into the air to slam the ball through an imaginary hoop.

Ray was well aware that as a general rule what goes up must come down. To his dismay, he now found himself disobeying that ancient dictum. He had gone up—but he wasn't coming down.

The floor!
he thought desperately.
Where's the floor?

“Got you!” rasped a terrifying metallic voice, mere inches from his ear. At the same instant Ray became aware of the fierce metal pincers digging into his sides. Deathmonger had snatched him in midleap!

Ray let out a bloodcurdling shriek. Suddenly it seemed as if the whole world were exploding. A cacophony broke loose in the warehouse. The robot began to spin in a circle, buzzing furiously. Through his haze of fear, Ray could hear Roger issuing orders: “Trip, move right. Hap, off to the left!”

Ray tried to make sense of what was happening, but the robot was whirling so fast he couldn't focus on anything.

Then, suddenly, the metallic monster dropped him. He slammed into the floor, the air rushing out of his lungs as if someone had stepped on him.

“More frequency modulation,” cried Roger. “Especially at the upper end!”

“Ray!” shouted Trip. “Get out of there!”

Too dizzy to walk, Ray pushed himself to his hands and knees and began crawling from the spot where Deathmonger had dropped him. He hadn't gone more than three feet when he heard something crash to the floor behind him.

“Got it!” cried Roger. “Wrap those coils around it. Fast! Wendy, get in here!”

Ray opened his eyes and tried to move again. He was staring at a pile of wooden boxes. Carefully turning around (how could the floor be moving so fast when he was on his hands and knees?), he saw the robot lying on its back, its wheels spinning helplessly in the air. Trip and Hap were wrapping coils of high-tension spring wire around it while Roger and Rachel held it at bay with the sound guns.

A dune buggy rolled into the warehouse and pulled to a stop beside the robot. “Sorry,” said Wendy. “I had to move a stack of boxes to get over here.” She looked at Deathmonger. “How can something mechanical look so mad? Is it secure yet?”

“Barely,” said Trip, stepping away from it. “If we had more wire, I'd keep wrapping. As it is, I'd suggest we get moving.”

“Then let's get it on board,” said Wendy.

Hap, Roger, Rachel, and Trip moved toward the fallen robot. Positioning themselves two on a side, they tried to lift it.

To their horrified surprise, they were unable to budge the thing. It was far heavier than they had suspected.

Wendy joined them, but it made no difference.

Ray tried to stagger over to help, too, but was still so dizzy from the robot's whirling that he fell back down.

Roger looked around desperately for something—anything—to help them move the mechanized monster.

Ray was watching the ceiling whirl when he noticed a network of track overhead. It took him a moment to make sense of what he was seeing. When it clicked into place, he rolled over, pushed himself to his knees, and cried, “Skyhook! Skyhook!”

Roger looked up. “Ray, if you were on salary, I'd give you a raise.”

“I think I saw the controls when we came in,” said Wendy. “They were over that way.”

“Let's move!” yelled Roger. He grabbed the Wonderchild by the hand and together they dashed in the direction Wendy had indicated.

Trip helped Ray to his feet. “I hope we get out of here soon,” he said nervously. “I doubt even Roger can talk us out of this one if we get caught.”

At that moment a huge hook swung down from the ceiling.

“We may just make it,” said Ray. “Get that hook into the bindings, you guys.”

Rachel and Hap grabbed the hook. But when they approached the robot, it let out a sudden bellow. They jumped back nervously.

“Oh, for heaven's sake!” exclaimed Ray, who was still feeling embarrassed that he hadn't been able to help with the attempts to lift the thing. Shaking himself free of Trip's supporting arm, he grabbed the hook from Rachel. Moving quickly despite his grogginess, he slipped the end of it under the wire the others had used to bind the robot.

“I guess familiarity does breed contempt,” he said, giving the chain attached to the hook a hearty tug. “I can't take this thing too seriously now that it's flat on its back.”

Not taking it seriously was a mistake. Even as Roger responded to Ray's signal by retracting the chain, a tentaclelike extension lashed out from the robot and wrapped itself around Ray's waist.

Pulled by the hook, the robot rose into the air. Shouting and struggling, the Gamma Ray rose with it.

Ramon Korbuscek slipped quietly through the shadows surrounding a darkened house near the center of Anza-bora Island.

A tingle of pleasure rippled over the spy's skin. He had always enjoyed the thrill of risk that accompanied even a simple break-in, but with the unexpected target he had found for tonight, the excitement he felt now was like a small fire.

He crouched beside a low bush to check the house again.

No sign of life. Indeed, if the lights were any indication, the occupant had turned in two hours ago, shortly after midnight. It would be reasonable to expect him to be asleep by now.

That didn't mean he would be, of course. Korbuscek was well aware of the dangers of assumption. The old man who lived in this house might be lying awake with insomnia; he might be in the bathroom; he might even be sitting up with only a tiny reading light, absorbed in one of those paperback thrillers Korbuscek knew he enjoyed so much.

You could never be sure.

Korbuscek patted his vest. He liked to feel the rows of pockets filled with the most sophisticated tricks the wizards of electronics, chemistry, and biology had been able to dream up.

His hand lingered on a small plastic vial. If broken, it would release a gas that would throw anyone within a ten-foot radius into a deep and peaceful slumber. Better yet, it would cause them to totally forget whatever had happened just before they passed out.

Reassured of the gas, Korbuscek tapped the side of his nose to make certain his filters were in place. (He always wore nasal filters on a mission like this. After all, his vest held more than a dozen different gasses, some deadly enough to drop a herd of elephants.)

Enough waiting!
he chided himself.
Time to start
.

Moving like a shadow, the spy crossed the lawn and approached the back door of the house.

A smile flickered over his lips as he stepped onto the porch. He had been looking forward to this operation since he turned up the listing of island personnel during his little “visit” to the clinic that morning. The smile changed to a frown when he recalled the boy who had spotted him as he was leaving the infirmary. He had already picked up enough gossip to know that the kids here might be a problem.

Still, the foray had been worth it. With their detailed medical records, clinics were always a prime source for useful information on the staff of a given place—yielding everything from names and ages to such helpful tidbits as allergies and medical weaknesses that could be used to put a person out of commission when necessary.

Though Korbuscek had been raiding clinics for years, never had one yielded a piece of information that surprised or delighted him as what he had found that morning: the name of the fierce old enemy who was now part of Project Alpha.

Dr. Weiskopf and his robot could wait for a little while.

At the moment, Ramon Korbuscek wanted to find out what Dr. Stanley Remov was up to these days.

Staff Sergeant Artemus P. Brody sat up in his bed and groaned. How long had that beeper been sounding?

Brody blinked. The “beeper” was the alarm that indicated one of the guard robots had cornered something! If it was those damn kids again…

Growling to himself, Brody flung his legs over the side of the bed and began to pull on his pants. He had a feeling this was not a
real
emergency. If he was right, someone was going to be very, very sorry. Stumbling into the main room of his quarters, he punched a button on the wall and snapped, “Peters! There's trouble with one of the robots. Meet me in the staff room.
Now!”

Brody stomped out of his quarters. When he reached the staff room, he noticed a light flashing on the chart posted on the back wall. He squinted at it and frowned. Warehouse Two again. It
had
to be the kids.

Brody pivoted at the sound of someone entering the room.

“What's up, chief?” asked Corporal Peters, stifling a yawn.

Before Brody could answer, the beeper's tone changed. Brody smiled and took a deep breath. The robot was signaling that it had made a capture.

That meant he could slow down just a bit. Let whoever had disturbed his sleep suffer for a while. He would get there soon enough.

“Oh, Rogerrrr!” called Wendy. “We've got a problem.”

“Get me outta here!” bellowed the dangling Gamma Ray, squirming wildly as he tried to break free from the robot's grip.

“Stop struggling!” cried Rachel. “If you
do
get loose, you might kill yourself.”

This seemed like a real possibility, since both Ray and the robot were suspended some fifteen feet above the warehouse floor. The robot, dangling from the “skyhook,” swung lazily back and forth, like a yo-yo twisting at the end of its string.

Roger came running from where he had been operating the skyhook controls. When he saw Ray, he groaned in despair.

“We've got to get him free from that robot,” said Trip.

“There's no time,” replied Roger. “If we're not out of here about five seconds ago, we're dead meat.”

He started back toward the control panel. “Trip, get the dune buggy in position underneath them. The rest of you stand ready to center Ray and his mechanical friend over it. Wendy, station yourself where you can keep an eye on Ray and still talk to me so you can guide me. Let's
move,
guys! And stop kicking, Ray. You'll only make things worse.”

By this time Roger had reached the control panel. He threw a switch, and the skyhook began to descend, lowering Deathmonger and Ray toward the back of the dune buggy.

“Steady, Roger!” yelled Wendy, who was standing at the end of a row of crates, in a spot from which she could see both the dune buggy and the control panel. “A little to the right. No, too much!
Too much!
Bring it back a bit!”

The robot's eyes were flashing, its wheels spinning at a furious pace. Suddenly it began to speak again. “Death to the intruders!” it snarled. “Death to the intruders!”

“Oh, God! Get me out of here quick!” yelled Ray. By now the Ray-robot combo was suspended only three feet above the dune buggy. Stretching onto their toes, Hap and Rachel tried to stop it from swaying.

“Quit struggling, Ray!” snapped Rachel. “It makes it harder to keep you in position!”

“All right, bring them down!” yelled Wendy when she saw that the others had the combo in position. “A little farther…a little farther…bull's-eye!”

Roger came barreling around the corner as Rachel disconnected the skyhook. Ray and his captor were wedged cozily into the backseat of the dune buggy.

“All right, let's get out of here!” yelled Roger.

“Aren't you going to get me loose first?” cried Ray.

“No time, buddy!” replied Roger, jumping onto the rear bumper. “Brody will be on our butts any second now. We have to get a move on. Floor it, Trip!”